Directors
Interviews - Directors
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The Luxury of Unhappiness: Director Hany Abu-Assad Talks Omar
In 2002, Palestine made its first Best Foreign Language Film submission to the Academy Awards. Despite accepting films from Puerto Rico, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did not accept their submission. But by the next year, the policy had changed: the Palestinian Ministry of Culture’s submission, Divine Intervention by Elia Suleiman, was accepted. Three years later, Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now, the acclaimed and controversial story of two Palestinian men planning a suicide attack on Tel Aviv, was not only accepted as Palestine’s submission, it was also one of the final five nominees competing […]
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In the Ruins: Paul W.S. Anderson on Pompeii
Pompeii, so-called vulgar auteurist Paul W. S. Anderson’s latest extravaganza, is a love story and a disaster movie, a prison film and a paean to a certain kind of tried-and-true action pic many directors attempt but few make as involving and effortlessly enjoyable as “the other” Paul Anderson. Since his 1994 debut, Shopping, he has, with moxie and aplomb, uncorked one high-concept genre thrill ride after another. In his first film since 2008 without his wife, the actress and model Milla Jovovich, the British veteran deftly takes on the sword-and-sandals adventure epic. After opening with an odd epigraph about the […]
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Five Questions with Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me Director Chiemi Karasawa
Chiemi Karasawa is fascinated by people. So after having worked in the film industry for almost 15 years as a script supervisor on dozens of narrative films, among them High Fidelity and Adaptation, Karasawa founded her production company Isotope Films in 2005, which she’s devoted to creating intimate studies of interesting characters. Karasawa has since produced several documentaries, including the award-winning Billy the Kid – a coming-of-age film about a confused teenager, and the Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning The Betrayal, a film shot over the course of 23 years about a family’s will to survive after moving from Laos to New York. With her first film as […]
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Child’s Pose Director Calin Peter Netzer on Rigorous Preparation, Letting Go on Set and Riding the Romanian New Wave
More than a year after winning the Golden Bear at last year’s Berlinale, Calin Peter Netzer’s Child’s Pose, a Romanian domestic drama that covers class and motherly impulses, is finally receiving a U.S. release, opening today at New York’s Film Forum and spreading to L.A. by week’s end. The latest entry in the ever-burgeoning Romanian New Wave, which has given us everything from Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills to Radu Muntean’s Tuesday, After Christmas, Child’s Pose zeros in on wealthy Bucharest native Cornelia Keneres (Luminita Gheorghiu) and her family, paying particular attention to her connection to her grown son, Barbu […]
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Sebastian Junger on Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues
Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues is surely one of the most fitting tributes to a fallen comrade ever dreamed up. Founded by Sebastian Junger in the wake of the combat zone death of his Restrepo co-director Tim Hetherington (I interviewed both back in 2010) RISC, based on a Wilderness Medical Associates course adapted for combat, aims to provide freelancers in all media with the kinds of lifesaving equipment and techniques that may have prevented Hetherington’s shrapnel wounds in Libya from killing him. Indeed, when I first heard about RISC its mission seemed so obviously crucial – to give combat journos […]
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Berlinale 2014: A.J. Edwards on The Better Angels and Terrence Malick
Watch any sequence of A.J. Edwards’ poetic The Better Angels and the influence of executive producer Terrence Malick is abundantly clear. Edwards’ relationship with the Days of Heaven director started in 2005 when he worked as co-cinematographer on the documentary The Making of The New World as well as co-editor on The New World. Subsequently, he was second unit director and co-director on The Tree of Life, To the Wonder and the upcoming Knight of Cups, starring Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale and Natalie Portman, which Edwards reveals is definitely coming out this year. Thierry Frémaux must be doing cartwheels. The Better Angels, about the early life of Abraham Lincoln, started life as a Malick […]
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Las Marthas Filmmakers Cristina Ibarra and Erin Ploss-Campoamor on Documenting Colonial Tradition on the U.S.-Mexico Border
Just in time for President’s Day, Las Marthas, an unlikely and unexpected tribute to America’s founding father, makes its broadcast debut tonight as part of PBS’ Independent Lens Series. Set in the south Texas border town of Laredo, Las Marthas tells of a century-long tradition in which debutantes from both sides of the border commemorate George Washington’s birthday. Both the film and its subject matter stand apart from so many negative expectations about the U.S.-Mexico border — there is no talk here of the drug war or weapons trafficking. Instead, the month of celebrations that culminates with the debutante ball […]
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Berlinale 2014: Göran Hugo Olsson on Concerning Violence
After years as a multihyphenate creator of a raft of documentaries (one of which is titled, wonderfully, Fuck You, Fuck You Very Much [1998]), Sweden’s Göran Hugo Olsson has recently come to greater prominence. His documentary on soul singer Billy Paul, Am I Black Enough For You, secured international distribution in 2009, while 2011’s vibrant archive collage The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 took him to another level. Olsson’s new film, like its predecessor, screens in the Panorama Documentary strand of the Berlinale. Concerning Violence is based on Frantz Fanon’s famous 1961 book, The Wretched of the Earth, and focuses, in nine discrete chapters, […]
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Civil Unrest: Yoruba Richen on The New Black
A probing look at homophobia in the black community and its most important institutions (the church) through the prism of Maryland’s landmark passage of gay marriage during last year’s election, Yoruba Richen’s The New Black sheds new light on the battle over who gets to define what civil rights is. Richen talks to black Marylanders from all walks of life and activists on both sides of the ballot issue, from Conservative clergyman to LGBT volunteers, coaxing incredible candor from most of them. Not surprisingly, The New Black reports things that anyone who actually spends much time around black communities would know, but still seem […]
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Berlinale 2014: Josephine Decker on Thou Wast Mild and Lovely and Butter on the Latch.
At every festival, there are “did you see that?” moments which create a buzz among audiences and critics. One such early example at this year’s Berlinale came midway through Josephine Decker’s hypnotic, farm-set thriller Thou Wast Mild and Lovely, when the point of view of a violent, ambiguously-rendered sexual encounter suddenly switches to that of a cow, through whose eyes we see the next few scenes. It’s a playful, idiosyncratic touch which recalls the chimp’s flashback in Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich, although it would be wrong to attempt to draw obvious comparisons between Thou Wast Mild and Lovely and […]
